Toyota's sales will most likely go up

[Niky]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63029226

Just red this article- link attached 

It doesn't make sense to buy an electric car anymore. It doesn't seem sustainable, what do you think 

Toyota's sales might get crazy and waiting list go beyond current 6 to 9 months 

 

[Cyker]

I've always said something like this was inevitable - Some operators were already charging 70p/kWh before all of this happened and also remember electricity doesn't have 'fuel tax' on it, and as sales of petrol and diesel drop the government would find ways of moving that tax to EVs, who've mostly been having a free ride so far.

If petrol and diesel already didn't have that tax or EVs had that tax too, it would have been near the cost to run an electric car even before the price hike in electricity.

I reckon even when the price of electricity goes down, the cost to charge won't change much as new taxes get levied on public chargers.

I've always said charging at home or at free/work chargers is the only way to save money with EVs, and if you can't it won't work.

It kinda sucks as the biggest draw for EVs was the reduced running costs, but hopefully it will force manufacturers to make the cars better, as they lag behind ICE cars in utility which is what's stopping people like me getting them, with deflective reasoning like "Oh but people only really drive 20-40 miles a day" and "Oh people only drive small cars short ranges in the city"

If those figures they cite in the article are true for a 40mpg car, then they're never going to compete with my Mk4, which is returning closer to 80mpg!!

 

[AndrueC]

"That is just 1p less per mile for a petrol car, based on someone driving at an average of 40 miles to the gallon, the motoring group said."

I've never owned a car that couldn't do better than that, even going back to my first BL Mini. Admittedly my cars have always only been used for extra urban motoring but still. 40mpg is easy to achieve unless you're tootling round the corner to the shops and back or ploughing through miles of inner city congestion.

In fact I think the last car I owned that regularly returned less than 50 mpg was my 1.6 Nissan Sunny and even that would have been high 40s. The Jazz' occasionally dipped below 50 in the depths of winter but they were usually low to mid 50s.

So it doesn't look good for public EV charging unless the cost per mile is inflated in the same way that the article thinks 40 mpg is representative for petrol vehicles.

[TonyHSD]

BEV’s does not suit everyone and especially those who drive a lot daily and those who has no charging facility at home.
Electric cars are great particularly in towns and densely populated areas, however owners need to have own chargers and not relying on public.  
Public charges should only be seen as an emergency top up and not as usual sources of power delivery. Also make a lot of sense to have electric car charged from solar panels either from home installation or the car itself.  
Evs has many more benefits over ice and should not only be compared as fuel price but also as how they drive, how reliable they are, how much they cost for maintenance, what is the environmental impact of using evs etc.  Battery electric cars has  always been the answer for big  cities and I wonder why they had been abolished in early days of automobile, obviously because of political decisions, as wrong as can be. Even now bev should not be forced to the public like they do.
Toyota approach is the smartest, use any fuel that suits the most your needs, therefore there is a role for each fuel to continue to power our society safely and environmentally friendly if used the smart way. 
London although destroyed as road network for cars has now transformed into a better place with many bev and hev, it’s just quieter and more relaxing to be on the streets plus cleaner air to breathe.

Conclusion: do not listen politics or media what to buy and drive, because one car may suit many but not exactly you and your needs, read, learn , research and take the best car for yourself first and then for the environment, you know sometimes keeping your existing ice car is better option or just have no car at all. Toyota hybrids for me make the largest coverage of most people needs, and the only one who does not accept them are the one who never actually understood how they work and how they drives. 👍

[Parts-King]

As said, most people will be charging from home, for example, Octopus off peak rate is 7.5p per KWH, you would be foolish to be paying 75p per KWH. There will be a place for BEV, but there will also be a place for Hybrid, Hydrogen, etc etc 

[TonyHSD]

Here what I believe is very interesting bev, real technology not a large screen only that get called a tech 👌⚡️https://sonomotors.com/en/sion/

self charging electric car 🚙 

[Kental]

57 minutes ago, Parts-King said:

As said, most people will be charging from home, for example, Octopus off peak rate is 7.5p per KWH, you would be foolish to be paying 75p per KWH. There will be a place for BEV, but there will also be a place for Hybrid, Hydrogen, etc etc 

I think that price is only for existing customers, not sure what deals are around currently for new customers.

[King Crimson]

2 hours ago, TonyHSD said:

Here what I believe is very interesting bev, real technology not a large screen only that get called a tech 👌⚡️https://sonomotors.com/en/sion/

self charging electric car 🚙 

Cool technology, they could make it slightly more appealing, no?

[TonyHSD]

4 minutes ago, King Crimson said:

Cool technology, they could make it slightly more appealing, no?

They could, but probably because of the materials used., and still not bad fir a first car plus comes with all season tyres 🛞😉👌

[Niky]

The same day I posted the link from BBC I coincidentally decided to watch some of the old series(season 1) from Grand Tour - Clarkson, May and Hammond

Very funny as they talk about electric cras back in 2016 - Clarkson hates them at a time😀. It has been not so long ago (2016 first season), and the public charges have been free, many if not most of them didn't work most of the time 😀, and the government has been giving a £5k ground towards buying a new electric car. 

How fast everything is changing and how fast do we forget

[TonyHSD]

3 hours ago, Niky said:

The same day I posted the link from BBC I coincidentally decided to watch some of the old series(season 1) from Grand Tour - Clarkson, May and Hammond

Very funny as they talk about electric cras back in 2016 - Clarkson hates them at a time😀. It has been not so long ago (2016 first season), and the public charges have been free, many if not most of them didn't work most of the time 😀, and the government has been giving a £5k ground towards buying a new electric car. 

How fast everything is changing and how fast do we forget

Forced change is never a good thing. This is what I am against to and not the electric cars themselves. I actually really like them and believe that electric motor is the way of the future but the Battery as we know it are not and a Battery gate will happen just around 2030 when they have to ban ice cars. Bev may get banned or abolish by customers beforehand. 🪫⚠️😂

[Niky]

I don't mind them electric cars, just not interested yet. The technology isn't good enough to meet my needs, price £££ doesn't meet my budget too

Very happy with the Corolla. Even looked at the new one, but won't be sustainable for the budget - I am(happily) married and have a kid if you know what I mean 😂😂😂😂. Being super happy to be able to get a new car - my first brand new one ever

[Broadway One]

2 hours ago, TonyHSD said:

How fast everything is changing and how fast do we forget

Hi all.....here's a curved ball !

First annual service yesterday.

Whilst waiting had a cursery of the bZ4X & a chat with the sales guy.

He had recently been at sales forum where new Mirai was featured.

Toyota are opening up their hydrogen fuel cell technology by easing patents & inviting other major manufactures to partner them in moving forward. Apparently after some 20 years they are to share the development with others & accelerate the move away from fossil fuel.

Couple this with JCB who are on the cusp of coming to market with a new design of ICE that burns liquid hydrogen directly for their whole range of machinery.

As intimated we live in fast changing times.

Barry Wright, Lancashire.       

[Parts-King]

Your man is a bit behind the times Barry, they opened up patents on the fuel cell very many years ago, this is from 2015

https://global.toyota/en/detail/4663648

That new Mirai is one nice car, the drive is superb 

[TonyHSD]

21 minutes ago, Parts-King said:

Your man is a bit behind the times Barry, they opened up patents on the fuel cell very many years ago, this is from 2015

https://global.toyota/en/detail/4663648

That new Mirai is one nice car, the drive is superb 

I  like a lot this car but lol expensive. What would be the highest mileage a mirai can go up to before any major repair bill, how long can fuel tank lasts and the fuel cell itself? These are questions I am interested. For the hybrids we all know they last quite long, I am on a course to find out how long exactly if all goes by plan. But hydrogen definitely is the fuel of the future either in ice and electric power trains . 👌👍

[Parts-King]

It needs more fleets to run them long term, Met Police had a fleet, don't know how they got on with them

[TonyHSD]

Yeah, I have seen murai first gen in London as police cars and ph cars, haven’t seen the second gen yet though, I think is probably the best Toyota car 👌

[Cyker]

I must admit I'm quite anti-hydrogen - It's literally worse than petrol and diesel in almost every way; The amount of energy lost in its creation and use is staggering, and the storage, transport and containment issues are non-trivial.

If we had a massive renewable energy surplus or unlimited fusion energy then it would be a non-problem, but right now I feel we'd actually be better off using that energy to create synthetic petrol/diesel from biomass, atmospheric CO2, engineering oceanic plants to absorb CO2 that we can harvest to turn into fuel to drive existing vehicles instead of also having to make totally new vehicles to use it.

The only 'good' thing about hydrogen is it's perceived zero-emissions, but even that's a white lie as it's just transferring the emissions further up the chain for the most part.

Those emissions and that energy are far better used directly... we just need to invent better batteries or find some new novel way of storing electricity. (Someone needs to invent Mr Fusion or a Warp Core!  )

 

re. Home charging, while that is definitely the best way, the problem is most people can't charge at home, not here at least, as they have to park on the street. The other problem is range - Even Toyota seems to be going down the "smaller-batteries, more frequent-charging" route; There are lots of plusses about that - Smaller batteries is less weight, better energy efficiency and also reduces costs and makes them more affordable, but it means people like me will have to use expensive public chargers regularly.

My absolute minimum base-line to avoid using public chargers for 99.9% of my usecase and still be useable to me is still 300 miles at 70mph in winter in something the size of a Yaris, and we're a lot further from that than I originally thought! (I thought we were 3-5 years away, as the Hyundai Kona is nearly small enough and nearly ranged enough, but that seems to be the peak as everything after that has been massive or have worse range...!)

 

That and the rising electricity costs suggest it'll be unlikely any BEV will be able to trump my Mk4 Yaris for a very long time...!  

[twintopp]

i agree with Cyker, Hydrogen is expensive in terms of energy to manufacture and extremely flammable so as said containment issues arise in normal use but more so in the event of an accident, i would expect a lot more vehicle fires.     i will stick with the Hybrid for now till the ev prices come down, the electricity cost doesn`t worry my too much as have solar panels so could charge for free. but would need an ev to do 450/500 miles per charge and charge in minutes not hours.

 

[Cyker]

To be fair, the flammability fear has led to them over-engineering the tanks so the chances of them blowing up are a lot less than with e.g. petrol.

It's biggest achilles heel is the sheer cost - People are already freaking out about how much high electricity is going to increase the p/mile of EVs, but that's still laughable compared to how expensive Hydrogen is per mile.

The Mirai is in a weird place as Toyota essentially gives you free hydrogen for several years if you buy a Mirai (At least I think they still do!), so owners don't realize how high the running costs are; IIRC it's something like double the p/mile of diesel and 1.5x petrol.

 

[Parts-King]

I don't agree with the issues of Hydrogen. Big supermarkets have to buy a product in currently, called petrol/diesel, when Hydrogen vehicles reach a certain point, it will be viable to produce it in huge quantities. At that point, supermarkets will be able to say to the refiners, we will make our own Hydrogen thanks, it will be made centrally and distributed around the country, or made in smaller industrial areas and transported locally. The hold the refiners currently have over them will dwindle away and the supermarkets will make their own/sell it to other suppliers. I had a very interesting conversation with the chap running Toyota's Mirai programme in the UK about 7-8 years ago, even then we were saying what are Governments going to do about road fund licence (tax) as that will also drop off a cliff at some point based on the current system. I see a real place for Hydrogen, but it won't be in my lifetime

[AndrueC]

1 hour ago, Parts-King said:

I don't agree with the issues of Hydrogen. Big supermarkets have to buy a product in currently, called petrol/diesel, when Hydrogen vehicles reach a certain point, it will be viable to produce it in huge quantities. At that point, supermarkets will be able to say to the refiners, we will make our own Hydrogen thanks, it will be made centrally and distributed around the country, or made in smaller industrial areas and transported locally.

That should drop the price but does nothing to address the fundamental issue that hydrogen has to be manufactured and that at present the processes involved require a lot of energy. Hydrogen ICE are also limited to ~40% efficiency due to laws of thermodynamics whereas electric motors exceed 90% efficiency.

The last time I looked into it hydrogen required about three times as much electricity so it's not just a matter of using cleaner energy we also have to build three times the capacity needed for a fleet of BEVs and accept a greater waste of energy.

Another way  to look at:

Hydrogen vehicle: Generate electricity->create hydrogen->transport hydrogen->burn hydrogen,

BEV:Generate electricity->turn a motor.

There are transmission losses in getting the electricity to the vehicle but they exist in getting electricity to your hydrogen plant and then you waste energy making the hydrogen and waste even more energy burning the hydrogen in the vehicle.

[Parts-King]

Hydrogen won't be the most popular fuel, but it will have a place, everybody thought BEV was lunacy a few years back, some still do, but it will have a place, all it needs it mass production, nothing can be produced at reasonable cost without the scale of mass production, hence releasing the patents so that it can be improved and reduce costs

[Tech429]

Sorry... but EV is not the future....

....yet.

ICE motors will be around for a long long time regardless of the 2030 proposal of greener planet, etc.

Just for fun, with a bit of reality thrown in - watch Lee on MacMaster on Youtube.  He has a Porsche EV on lease and he does some good vlogs on the EV subject.  At one stop he did for about 30 minutes he charged it up for 28% boost and he paid £37 !?!?!?  And he had to wait around... buy a coffee... and something to eat... all adding to the cost.

Where us petrol or diesel drivers would pull in, fill up in about 5 minutes at around the same price and get going.

He even travelled to Bangor in North Wales... went to a charge point with 2 places... he could not charge as the place available was the wrong side for his car even if he backed in it would not stretch.  The car in the other place had 30 minutes to go... then the guy could not remove the plug as it was stuck (another 10 minutes wait) then eventually he got in to charge his car... just as another guy pulled in next to him saying he had just been to Morrisons down the road and all their charge points - 4 of them I think - were out of order.  He finds this all over the UK and it is not great to think the Gov want us to go EV, but if the reliable and fast... and reasonable priced infrastructure isn't there what is the point?

All adding to the cost and minutes of your life you will never get back 😆

[APS]

3 minutes ago, Tech429 said:

Sorry... but EV is not the future....

....yet.

 

I disagree (or maybe you just need to qualify your statement).

EV is most likely a big part of our mobility future. BEV, however, is partially transitional and may eventually be a smaller part.